Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. How to find orphan pages

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How to find orphan pages

    Technical SEO
    2
    4
    3162
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • KJH-HAC
      KJH-HAC last edited by

      Hi all,

      I've been checking these forums for an answer on how to find orphaned pages on my site and I can see a lot of people are saying that I should cross check the my XML sitemap against a Screaming Frog crawl of my site.

      However, the sitemap is created using Screaming Frog in the first place... (I'm sure this is the case for a lot of people too).

      Are there any other ways to get a full list of orphaned pages? I assume it would be a developer request but where can I ask them to look / extract?

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • Roman-Delcarmen
        Roman-Delcarmen @KJH-HAC last edited by

        Yes I mentioned in my case I use Semrush and there is a dedicated space for that specific parameter. The easiest way to get your log files is logging into your cPanel and find an option called Raw Log Files. If you are still not able to find it, you may need to contact your hosting provider and ask them to provide the log files for your site.

        Raw Access Logs allow you to see what the visits to your website were without displaying graphs, charts, or other graphics. You can use the Raw Access Logs menu to download a zipped version of the server’s access log for your site. This can be very useful when you want to quickly see who has visited your site.

        Raw logs may only contain a few hours’ worths of data because they are discarded after the system processes them. However, if archiving is enabled, the system archives the raw log data before the system discards it. So go ahead and ensure that you are archiving!

        Once you have your log file ready to go, you now need to gather the other data set of pages that can be crawled by Google, using Screaming Frog.

        Crawl Your Pages with Screaming Frog SEO Spider

        Using the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, you can crawl your website as Googlebot would, and export a list of all the URLs that were found.

        Once you have Screaming Frog ready, first ensure that your crawl Mode is set to the default ‘Spider’.

        Then make sure that under Configuration > Spider, ‘Check External Links’ is unchecked, to avoid unnecessary external site crawling.

        Now you can type in your website URL, and click Start.

        Once the crawl is complete, simply
        a. Navigate to the Internal tab.
        b. Filter by HTML.
        c. Click Export.
        d. Save in .csv format.

        Now you should have two sets of URL data, both in .csv format:
        All you need to do now is compare the URL data from the two .csv files, and find the URLs that were not crawlable.

        If you decided to analyze a log file instead, you can use the Screaming Frog SEO Log File Analyser to uncover our orphan pages. (Keep in mind that Log File Analyzer is not the same tool that SEO spyder)

        The tool is very easy to use (download here), from the dashboard you have the ability to import the two data sets that you need to analyze

        If the answer were useful do not forget to mark it as a good answer ....Good Luck

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • KJH-HAC
          KJH-HAC @Roman-Delcarmen last edited by

          Hi Roman,

          Out of interest, is there an option to expert an orphan page report like there is in Screaming Frog? (Reports / Orphan Pages).

          I guess the true and most realistic option is to get the list from the dev team as using the sitemap isn't plausible as these pages should still get indexed. The new Google Search Console also lets you test individual pages and as long as they're in the sitemap, they should (hopefully) be indexed.

          Still, trying to get a list of ALL pages on a site, without dev support, seems to be a challenge I'm trying to solve

          Roman-Delcarmen 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Roman-Delcarmen
            Roman-Delcarmen last edited by

            Even Screaming-frog have problems to find all the orphan-pages, I use Screaming-frog, Moz, Semrush, Ahrefs, and Raven-tools in my day to day and honestly, Semrush is the one that gives me better results for that specific tasks. As an experience, I can say that a few months ago I took a website and it was a complete disaster, no sitemap, no canonical tags, no meta-tags and etc.

            I run screaming-frog and showed me just 200 pages but I knew it was too much more at the end I founded 5k pages with Semrush, probably even the crawler of screaming frog has problems with that website so I commenting that as an experience.

            KJH-HAC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            Browse Questions

            Explore more categories

            • Moz Tools

              Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

            • SEO Tactics

              Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

            • Community

              Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

            • Digital Marketing

              Chat about tactics outside of SEO

            • Research & Trends

              Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

            • Support

              Connect on product support and feature requests.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • HashtagHustler

              Cant find source of redirect

              Hey guys, I have a bizarre situation on my hands. I have a URL that is being wonky. The url is redirecting to another url and the 301 redirect is not in my htaccess. There is a 301 redirect in my htaccess but is being overwritten by something else, i.e. whatever is happening in above. So basically URL A should be redirecting to URL B but instead its going to URL C. I know we were not hacked, it's not redirecting to a strange bizarre domain. I have also disabled all of our plugins that redirect (to my knowledge) Any thoughts would be great!

              Technical SEO | | HashtagHustler
              0
            • Ham1979

              Reviews on Product Page or Separated

              Good Afternoon We currently have our individual product information pages set-up with a link through to a separate review page optimised for the term "Product A Reviews" I was reading about structured data and if I read correctly, the reviews should sit with the marked up product data so I was wondering whether to merge them back into one page. We have many reviews so the review pages are paginated in blocks of 25 My options are: Leave as it is, product info page and separate review page Merge the review content back in to the main page and have the pagination work on that page Include the first 25 reviews on the product info page then when user clicks through to page 2, 3 etc they're taken to the separated review page. In that way the product page would regularly get new content and we can still have a page specifically targeted for reviews. From the users point of view, they probably aren't even aware they're being taken to a separate reviews page so with that in mind as I'm typing this maybe they should be one page again

              Technical SEO | | Ham1979
              0
            • BrianAlpert78

              Does a no-indexed parent page impact its child pages?

              If I have a page* in WordPress that is set as private and is no-indexed with Yoast, will that negatively affect the visibility of other pages that are set as children of that first page? *The context is that I want to organize some of the pages on a business's WordPress site into silos/directories. For example, if the business was a home remodeling company, it'd be convenient to keep all the pages about bathrooms, kitchens, additions, basements, etc. bundled together under a "services" parent page (/services/kitchens/, /services/bathrooms/, etc.). The thing is that the child pages will all be directly accessible from the menus, so there doesn't need to be anything on the parent /services/ page itself. Another such parent page/directory/category might be used to keep different photo gallery pages together (/galleries/kitchen-photos/, /galleries/bathroom-photos/, etc.). So again, would it be safe for pages like /services/kitchens/ and /galleries/addition-photos/ if the /services/ and /galleries/ pages (but not /galleries/* or anything like that) are no-indexed? Thanks!

              Technical SEO | | BrianAlpert78
              1
            • MTalhaImtiaz

              Are image pages considered 'thin' content pages?

              I am currently doing a site audit. The total number of pages on the website are around 400... 187 of them are image pages and coming up as 'zero' word count in Screaming Frog report. I needed to know if they will be considered 'thin' content by search engines? Should I include them as an issue? An answer would be most appreciated.

              Technical SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz
              0
            • AB_Newbie

              How to find all crawlable links on a particular page?

              Hi! This might sound like a newbie question, but I'm trying to find all crawlable links (that google bot sees), on a particular page of my website. I'm trying to use screaming frog, but that gives me all the links on that particular page, AND all subsequent pages in the given sub-directory. What I want is ONLY the crawlable links pointing away from a particular page. What is the best way to go about this? Thanks in advance.

              Technical SEO | | AB_Newbie
              0
            • Branden_S

              Page titles in browser not matching WP page title

              I have an issue with a few page titles not matching the title I have In WordPress.  I have 2 pages, blog & creative gallery, that show the homepage title, which is causing duplicate title errors.  This has been going on for 5 weeks, so its not an a crawl issue.  Any ideas what could cause this? To clarify, I have the page title set in WP, and I checked "Disable PSP title format on this page/post:"...but this page is still showing the homepage title.  Is there an additional title setting for a page in WP?

              Technical SEO | | Branden_S
              0
            • ShawnHerrick

              Product Pages Outranking Category Pages

              Hi, We are noticing an issue where some product pages are outranking our relevant category pages for certain keywords. For a made up example, a "heavy duty widgets" product page might rank for the keyword phrase Heavy Duty Widgets, instead of our Heavy Duty Widgets category page appearing in the SERPs. We've noticed this happening primarily in cases where the name of the product page contains an at least partial match for the desired keyword phrase we want the category page to rank for. However, we've also found isolated cases where the specified keyword points to a completely irrelevent pages instead of the relevant category page. Has anyone encountered a similar issue before, or have any ideas as to what may cause this to happen? Let me know if more clarification of the question is needed. Thanks!

              Technical SEO | | ShawnHerrick
              0
            • briankb

              Landing Page URL Structure

              We are finally setting up landing pages to support our PPC campaigns. There has been some debate internally about the URL structure. Originally we were planning on URL's like: domain.com /california /florida /ny I would prefer to have the URL's for each state inside a "state" folder like: domain.com /state /california /florida /ny I like having the folders and pages for each state under a parent folder to keep the root folder as clean as possible. Having a folder or file for each state in the root will be very messy. Before you scream URL rewriting :-). Our current site is still running under Classic ASP which doesn't support URL rewriting. We have tried to use HeliconTech's ISAPI rewrite module for IIS but had to remove it because of too many configuration issues. Next year when our coding to MVC is complete we will use URL rewriting. So the question for now: Is there any advantage or disadvantage to one URL structure over the other?

              Technical SEO | | briankb
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.